Effects of television content on physical risk-taking in children

This study is an investigation of effects of risk-taking by characters in television programs on children's self-reported willingness to take physical risks. Twenty-four boys and 26 girls, ages 6 to 9 years, were assigned to view TV stimulus programs with infrequent physical risk-taking. TV stimulus programs with frequent risk-taking, or no TV stimuli. A self-report measure was used to assess children's willingness to take physical risks in several common injury-relevant situations. Five of the items were administered as a pretest before children watched the stimulus programs and five items were used as a post-test after they viewed the programs. A validation assessment on an independent sample of children indicated that the risk-taking measure was positively correlated with other measures of risk-taking as well as physical injuries. Results indicated that children who viewed the high-risk TV programs increased their self-reported risk-taking significantly more than children in the low-risk TV and no-TV control conditions. Findings are discussed within a theoretical context of observational learning processes, with implications for childhood injury.